the council poured nearly $650,000 into supporting wisconsin republican tommy thompson's bid for the u.s. senate this november. by now it won't surprise you to learn that wisconsin's former governor has been a friend of alec going all the way back to his days as a state legislator, when he himself was an alec member. take a listen to a speech thompson made at an alec conference in 2002. >> myself i always loved to go to these meetings because i always found new ideas, and then i'd take them back to wisconsin, disguise them a little bit and declare them as mine. >> ah yes, tommy thompson and so many others. finally, alec, meet alice. that's right, alec now has some competition. inspired by professor joel rogers, the wisconsin champion of open democracy, alice is a transparent, non-corporate, out-in-the-open, web-based library of model laws on a range of public interest issues. alice doesn't have corporate or billionaire backers. the work is done by volunteers -- so in the constant struggle for democracy is still david versus goliath, but as you'll remember from that ancient story, the gia